2. Target audience
We are aiming our film at both male and females aged
15 and above. We have done this as most crime films
are rated at a 15 and that is what we have decided to do.
We did not want to specify ourselves to one gender and
also did not want to offend viewers by adding an age
limit. We are releasing our film on February 14th 2015
(Valentines Day). We had done this because we felt it
added a twist to usual films released around this day. It is
well-known for couples, as well as singles to visit the
cinema on this day every year. Some people may not
want to watch a typical romantic film, but do want to visit
the cinema. As 50 Shades of Grey would be released the
day before our film, we felt that not all audiences would
want to watch this genre of film, so we wanted to offer
something different, to almost juxtapose the idea of love
on Valentines day, as our film is a about a twisted
marriage, similar to the narrative of Mr and Mrs Smith.
3. Marketing a film…and how
important it is…
Throughout the planning, production, post-
production to marketing and releasing a film,
the film industry will need to keep careful
consideration for the target audience. They
need this to gain as many people as possible to
watch their film as word of mouth is the best
advertising technique. To be able to do this, the
industry need to have developed an in-depth
understanding about their audience. They will
need to look into the age groups, lifestyle,
social networking and how their media
consumption activities take place.
4. Our target audience of ages 15 and
upwards, have grown up within the era of
the internet. Therefore it is inevitable that we
would need to make sure the internet plays
a big part in the advertising of our film. The
internet can be accessed from several
platforms in the present day; mobile phones;
tablets; TV’s; computer etc.
Web 2.0 is the internet; this comes at an
advantage for film industries and distributors
as a positive buzz can be created between
audiences, adding another aspect of
advertisement.
5. Promoting our film…
We chose to use Miramax as our distribution
company. We did this as although we did not
want to have a high-end mainstream film,
using a well-known distribution company will
allow us to promote our film in a much more
large-scale manner. This would then include
focusing on promoting our film to a wider
audience. As we are not using high-end
technology to produce our film, we would be
able to focus on spending the money on
6. Other films promoting techniques…
Most films have their film trailers shown on television and in
cinemas. They also pay for posters to be displayed on bus
shelters as well billboards and on buses themselves. We
realised that as we are focusing on audiences from the age of 15
and up, we should depend on using web 2.0 to spread the word
about our film. Many social networking sites such as Twitter,
YouTube and Facebook allow films to display interactive posts of
their film on their websites. By simply showing a small banner of
our film on one of these websites and using interactive
techniques, we could interact with our audiences without direct
interaction itself. Also, using web 2.0 allows us to use the ‘related
films’ and ‘other films you might like’ approach whilst audiences
are perhaps looking at other films similar to ours. Advertisements
such as these, come at a small cost on social network sites and
would allow us to make bigger profits for the rest of our film to
sell.
7. Film previews…
As well as film festivals, most films nowadays screen previews of their
films. This is usually a way to entice audiences for films that have well-
known and loved actors and actresses. Films such as Harry Potter and
The Hunger Games will have these previews in London as a way of
getting people in to try and ‘catch a glimpse’ of their favourite
characters. Most cinemas also advertise one off screenings for films to
see what feedback and response they receive. Both Cineworld and
Odeon cinemas are known to screen previews of films. This is a way
that we considered as it would see how and what type of audience
reacts with our film. We can do this as cinemas offer different ticket
types. Cineworld for example offer tickets such as; Adult, Child, Senior,
Student and Family. This way, we can communicate with cinemas and
see what age of audiences are buying tickets to watch our film.
8. Posters are a great advertisement
technique. It can offer information about a
film without giving too much away, unlike a
trailer, it it simplistic and a lot cheaper. They
can be seen on bus shelters, billboard,
buses and many more places.
9. For our film posters we wanted to
have more than one. This could
offer a better way of promoting our
film as it would show different
aspects, with regards to characters
in our film.
We wanted to follow a similar theme
to the Star Wars posters shown
above. We liked the way that you
can get an idea of the characters
but not too much is given away. It’s
a simplistic idea which would
hopefully entice our audience into
wanting to find out more.
10. This is the second of our two
posters. It follows the same idea as
the other, similar to Star Wars. We
liked the fact that we used both our
main characters for the picture. We
also liked that it shows both a male
and a female perspective and would
therefore be attracted by both a male
and female audience. Both the
posters have a characters outline
with an image of Brighton. We liked
this idea as it introduced both
character, setting and a hint of
narrative for the audience to want to
see more.
The smear/drip effect is an
idea we found from a Skyfall
poster. It shows no end and
works well with the lighting,
especially from the pier on
this poster.
